In crowd-sourcing, I see a great opportunity for Sony not just in Japan but also elsewhere, including the U.S., where it no longer even sells an e-reader for the masses.

The Digital Paper productivity tool (video here) shows that e-reader-related tech at Sony isn’t all dead. Alas, however, Sony so often has been tone-deaf toward e-booklovers and others. Why did B&N, Amazon and Kobo get there first with front-lit displays, for example? No wonder Sony scaled back.

But suppose Sony could reenter the consumer e-book market with an affordable device with a killer display and text to speech and decent page-turning buttons and other wrinkles to set it apart from Amazon. I’d be the first to line up to propose such a project under Sony’s First Flight program if FF ended up here in the States and ordinary consumers could speak out.

I know. I’m perhaps dreaming. The economics of developing a full-fledged e-reader are probably very different from those of a mere remote control device. But here’s a suggestion for Sony. Think of crowd-sourcing as just another kind of focus-grouping, except people would actually be willing to speak with their wallets. Even if crowd-sourcing didn’t pay for more than a fraction of an e-reader project, it would be a way to test the waters and better connect Sony with the marketplace. Liliputing itself is thinking along somewhat similar lines.

For once, let’s hope, Sony will listen—and not hear out and act on suggestions from just its employees (apparently a limit of First Flight in its initial form). No Sony stock. I just like the idea of Sony and Amazon duking it out in a serious way in e-book hardware.

Years ago I begged a contact in Sony’s e-book program to make it easier for customers to farm books out to different machines and sync their places in them so people could move easily from device to device. No luck. Amazon better understood the market and gave us Whispersync. Ouch. Another opportunity lost. Crowd-sourcing, however, could help get Sony back in the e-book game and benefit the company in other areas.

I’d also welcome Sony having the guts to look beyond traditional DRM and popularize social DRM (with unique identifiers in books to discourage piracy). How about developing a good social DRM platform for interested publishers? Fodder for B2B crowd-sourcing—and one way to help atone for the Sony BMG rootkit scandal?

Yes, yes, I’m curious to know what TeleRead community members think Sony should crowd-source? What products are you eager to see created by a company with Sony’s resources?

Detail: Some might wonder why a rich company like Sony might even mess with crowd-sourcing. But—beyond the marketing and PR value—even a global corporation can’t afford to experiment with everything.

PEN American Center has said its piece on the Sony Pictures/Interview debacle, which ought after all be of interest to writers (screenwriters or otherwise) everywhere who struggle against censorship. The statement took the form of an open letter “from PEN to Michael Lynton, Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman and CEO re: The Interview.”

The open letter states that: “PEN is appalled at the intrusive, criminal and profoundly menacing reprisals and threats that Sony Pictures has endured as a result of producing and planning to distribute The Interview. PEN has long stood with writers and creators who have suffered assaults aimed to suppress the dissemination of their ideas. We believe firmly that violence is never justified as a reaction to speech, no matter how offensive that speech may be to some.”

PEN offers the benefits of its experience in dealing with the situation. “We extend our solidarity to Sony Entertainment, and offer our support in whatever form is useful to you and to all those involved in The Interview. The attack on Sony Pictures is an assault on the wider creative community; one that must be met with unity and resolve.” This includes actual arrangements to show the film. “PEN would be very pleased to arrange to screen The Interview publicly in New York or Washington, DC with appropriate security precautions. This is a genuine offer and one that we hope you will take seriously.”

PEN also takes its stand on the widely contested rumors that North Korea was behind the threats against Sony. “That the intervention of a foreign government that makes a mockery of intellectual freedom should determine what the American public can see and what American artists can produce is shocking; it puts us all under the sway of armed fundamentalism and intolerance.”

All this said, PEN does not explicitly criticize Sony Pictures for declining to screen The Interview, as many others have done, although it does urge what it takes to be the right course. “It is in solidarity and in an appeal to our shared appreciation of the importance of creative expression that we urge you to take swift action to fulfill your pledge to find a way to distribute The Interview. This work should be made widely available, proving that threats and intimidation will not win the day … If the decision to pull The Interview from all platforms stands, it will represent a lasting blow for free expression, emboldening would-be censors the world over.”

The decision by Sony Pictures to release The Interview at a selected number of cinemas in the U.S. on Christmas Day at least goes partway towards meeting PEN’s recommendations, although it still falls well short of a full theatrical release. For the time being, then, the whole incident appears to be at least a partial victory for the forces of repression.

This is a project that has been in gestation since at least 2009, when Rodriguez first started talking up plans to produce a film based on the work of his friend and idol, who died in 2010. Rodriguez’s more recent comments on his goals, dating from August this year, indicate a work in progress that aims to stay both close to the original movie and to Frazetta’s own style and views – to such an extent that Rodriguez talks of giving Frazetta a (posthumous, alas) co-directing credit. And remember that this is El Mariachi, Desperado, and From Dusk Till Dawn Rodriguez, a filmmaker who could probably make paint drying look intensely kinetic. What he could do with Frazetta fighting scenes hardly bears thinking about.

Frazetta’s influence on the development and even characterization of the entire swords and sorcery/fighting fantasy genre, dating from his first paperback book covers back in the early 1960s, can hardly be overstated – it probably exceeds the impact of any other figure who wasn’t an actual writer in the field. Many artists and computer game designers claim him as an influence, and franchises such as Dragonlance and the Fighting Fantasyseries of single-player roleplay gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, as well as the novelizations based on such series, probably owe as much to him as to Robert E. Howard and other earlier fantasy authors.

Regrettably, Fire and Ice also might delay swords and sorcery’s long-overdue reconciliation with adulthood and sexual equality. But I for one find it hard to carp. Rodriguez? On Frazetta? What’s not to break out the mead and sound the war-horns over?

If you are ready to spend more than $1,000, you can buy one on Amazon for $1,300. EBay also has completed prices ranging between $1,400 and $1,600. The only current reseller in the U.S. is Worldox and is not available to the average consumer.

Here’s the thing, these items have sold. Completed listings on eBay show 13 of these readers (mostly the Japanese version) selling for more than $1,400 each.

So what makes this reader so intriguing? When dealing with cloud-based storage, consumers can access thousands of documents. It could be a tool for lawyers, researchers or government officials. Consider the thousands of pieces of paper that are created – and perhaps even now eliminated – by those professionals that need access to mountains of data.

It also allows users to create sticky notes and annotate documents.

The price isn’t pretty, but clearly there are people out there who have found a need for this product. But what makes this so different from a Microsoft Surface or another tablet with PDF-reading capabilities? Is it the 13.3-inch screen? The light weight? The large amount of internal and external storage? All of it?

Yesterday, I received an email from the Sony Reader Store with a custom link to use to migrate my Sony store account. Has anyone else gotten this yet?

I clicked the link and expected a smooth transfer; I didn’t get it. Three attempts later, I finally got a prompt screen to call tech support, which I did; I spent quite some time on hold, and then was told my problem has to be ‘escalated to level 2.’ The rep seemed unsure of what would occur once that happened but said they have a special team set up to handle the Sony stuff.

Several posters at Mobile Read are reporting seamless, if incomplete transfers, just like people did with the Barnes & Noble transfers. Most, but not all books are going through. In a few cases, the missing books are even sold by Kobo.

Personally, I gave it one more try this morning and was told that my merge was successful but I didn’t have any books which transferred. I only had a few Sony store purchases, and I think all but one of them was a freebie, so I am not too upset. But I still don’t forgive Fictionwise for giving their Canadian customers no such options, so I guess I was hoping to get a book or two salvaged from Sony. Thanks to Calibre, I have them all downloaded, saved and ready to go at least!

The Business Rusch: Publicity Campaigns (Kristine Kathryn Rusch)First, you have to make an overall decision on your marketing. Are you marketing yourself or your books? Because there’s a huge difference between being a famous writer and having written a well-known novel.
***

Sony Now Sending Out Emails Over the Transition to Kobo (The Digital Reader)When Sony announced back in February that they were closing the North American branch of the Sony Reader Store, they promised that their customers would have a chance to shift their accounts to Kobo.
***

2013 Nebula Nominees Announced (SFWA)Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America are pleased to announce the 2013 Nebula Awards nominees (presented 2014), the nominees for the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and the nominees for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy.
***

Where eBook Subscription Services Could Have the Most Success (Digital Book World)The U.S. is the biggest ebook market in the world and three of the most prominent ebook subscription start-ups are based here, but it may not be the most promising launch pad for such a business. Countries where digitization of books have hurt publishers the most might be the best places for subscription services to take root.
***

Kobo’s International Strategy is Paying Off (Digital Book World)Kobo’s content revenue was up 44% in the fourth quarter of 2013 over the previous year, and its customer base grew last year by 50%, proving its push into international markets is so far paying off.
***

I just received an email from the Sony store announcing that they are closing the store in the U.S. and Canada as of March 20, 2014. All customers will be transferred to Kobo. Here’s the relevant paragraph from the email:

You don’t have to do anything right now, and you’ll be able to re-download your previously purchased eBooks for a limited time. In late March, you will receive a notification from us with a link that will allow you to transfer your library to Kobo. Whether you are new to Kobo or already have an account, you’ll be able to transfer your Reader Store eBooks to your Kobo account so you’ll continue to have access to them in the future. Plus, any existing Reader Store credits you might still have in your account will transfer to your Kobo account to use at the Kobo Store. And of course, you can continue to use your Sony Reader to read eBooks from Kobo.

All in all, not a big surprise. While Sony used to have fantastic hardware, their store has never been exciting, and their hardware has been slipping of late. According to the DBW article, the Kobo reader will be pre-installed on select Sony tablets.

I do hope the Sony–>Kobo transfer goes more smoothly than Fictionwise–>B&N went.

Today marks an important anniversary for our digital media era—an era that couldn’t have been foreseen thirty years ago, but nonetheless relies to a very great extent on a legal decision exactly thirty years old. Today is the 30th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision that declared the Sony Betamax VCR was legal because “time shifting,” recording a program off the air to watch it later, was fair use, and thus the VCR had substantial non-infringing purposes. Ars Technica has a feature article looking at the context of the decision in greater detail.

This decision is crucial to our digital world because copying is so much of what digital does. Even though the copies made back then were analog, the principle is still the same in digital—a copy is a copy. Thus, when an appeals court ruled that MP3 players were legal because “space shifting” was fair use, it was relying on the Betamax decision. Though the decision was about Diamond Multimedia’s Rio MP3 player, it nonetheless paved the way for the iPad to come along a few years later—which led to the iPhone and Android, which led to the iPad and Nexus, and our entire mobile digital world.

It’s a decision that came up in the Cablevision case regarding the legality of cloud-based DVRs to record shows for consumers at the cable company rather than in the home. And it will likewise be important in the case of Aereo, which records TV broadcasts from individual micro-antennas so they can be streamed over the Internet.

Michael Robertson tried to argue that this was what his ill-fated MP3.com service for streaming music over the Internet if you could prove you owned the CD did, without much success, and his later MP3Tunes music locker service attracted similar attention—even though Apple, Amazon, and Google all have their own such services now—and in much the same way as Robertson’s original MP3.com service, they don’t even require you to upload the MP3s for songs they already have on file themselves.

In practically any case that involves making copies of media for personal use, you can bet this one comes up somewhere. So, anyway, Sony, thanks for sticking up for our right to copy, and giving us thirty great years of time and space shifting.

The BBC’s Magazine section has a story on a 13-year-old kid’s experience over the course of a week using one of the original Walkman tape players, which came out 30 years ago this week. As you might expect, it’s replete with “How does this work? This looks funny. I can’t believe people actually used to think this thing was awesome!” from the younger generation. (It’s easy to wonder how he couldn’t understand a Walkman, but you have to remember he’s just 13. It would be like asking someone from my generation to figure out a reel-to-reel player in 1986.)

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

He dinged the Walkman for its bulk, weight, battery life, and capacity, but enjoyed the way it had two earphone jacks instead of one (only the first Walkmans did) and the socket for plugging directly into AC power.

Did my dad, Alan, really ever think this was a credible piece of technology?

"I remembered it fondly as a way to enjoy what music I liked, where I liked," he said. "But when I see it now, I wonder how I carried it!"

The Walkman really was the iPod of its day, in more ways than one. Not only was it the way people listened to music portably back then, but it was the huge gotta-have-it device. Expensive, too—at over $200 in 1983 ($470 in 2013 dollars), it was tantamount to the iPod in price as well. I didn’t get mine until a few years later when they were running at $50 to $60 thanks to competition from other, cheaper brands. (In fact, my first one was a General Electric.)

Funny thing, though: you haven’t seen competition bring prices down as much for iPods as you did Walkmans back in the day. Probably that’s because they’re not as substitutable as Walkmans. Any player could play any cassette, but now you’ve got vendor lock-in with iTunes and other music apps. A switch from one device to another could mean going through a lot of rigamarole.

Over the course of packing for my move to Greenwood, IN, I rediscovered my own Sony Walkman, one of the generation a few years later that was smaller and lighter with more features, as well as the Case Logic case I used to cart it and four tapes of my choice around in. I remember way back when, I was so into having my tunes available that I would take not only that case, but two 30-tape portable cassette cases with me everywhere I went. As nostalgic as I am for the bad old days, I still don’t feel any urge to ditch my 32 GB Android smartphone for it. Mobile technology marches on.

The U.S. education sector has become the nation’s second-biggest sector after healthcare. The value of education industry is estimated at nearly $1.5 trillion — roughly 10% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, according to GSV Asset Management and Candlestick Research.

For some writers, their author website is a thing of pride of beauty. It’s an active well of new material, a place of engagement and connection, an extension of their books, even an invitation into their writing life. It gathers email addresses, expands audience, benefits SEO, and is their personal beachhead on the Web.

And with Samsung’s Galaxy Gear wrist device now only days away from launch, it looks like this new generation will be rolling out with at least some of the devices running varieties of Android, with access—at least in principle—to the library of e-reader apps on the Google Play Store.

WIMM Labs already has one device, the WIMM One, based on Android. And although this unit hardly challenges the limits of the possible, based on what we know, the reports that WIMM’s developers have stayed on board through the transition to Google ownership hint that the new parent may be looking to take future devices considerably further.

Google Glass already provides a test bed for a whole series of ultra-mobile applications, and it’s not hard to envisage Google migrating some of these onto (cheaper, less obtrusive) wrist devices.

Motorola and Sony already have Android-based smartwatches in production, so Google is not exactly moving into uncharted territory. And the statements and leaked menu screenshots of the Galaxy Gear (pictured at right) point to a very interesting gadget, not least in having NFC for synchronization with smartphones. And if the iWatch is really delayed until 2014 as some reports suggest, then Android devices could end up dominating the category.

That said, the question remains whether anyone will ever read on such small devices. I think they will. The form factor may not be ideal, but people have produced hacks and apps for every size of phone and device over the years. I don’t expect smartwatches will be any different.

Another brief Baen update: Baen e-books have started appearing on the Sony e-book store. It’s hard to tell how many, because it’s apparently not possible to search by publisher, but a number of Baen David Weber, David Drake, and other titles have started to show up. Baen publisher Toni Weisskopf said on the Baen Bar that a press release had been approved and was supposed to go out today, though I don’t find any sign of it on Google News yet.

The biggest surprise for me in all this is really that Sony is still selling e-books at all. Sony’s “make.believe” slogan seems especially relevant, since for all the impact they have on the marketplace, e-book stores are that aren’t Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, or Kobo might as well be make-believe. It seems like an odd choice to put books in Sony when they still haven’t made inroads into Barnes & Noble or Kobo yet. Still, every little bit of marketplace helps, and I imagine negotiations with the other stores are still ongoing.

They are trying to match moods with books by having virtual flip cards with the mood you’re feeling and a book recommendation. Well, in the first place, my current mood (tired from a long drive) isn’t available, which makes me cranky. Whoops. That one’s missing too.

OK, let’s get creative. Hey, that’s there! So I’m supposed to read “The Interestings” by Meg Wolitzer. Teens at summer camp? In my current mood? Nope, I’m in the mood for an angst-free zone right now.

A piece of news has surfaced that makes for some pretty alarming headlines: Amazon.com Inc., Kobo Inc., and Sony Electronics Inc. have formed a self-described “Coalition of E-Reader Manufacturers” to petition the U. S. Federal Communications Commission, “for Waiver of Sections 716 and 717 of the Communications Act and Part 14 of the Commission’s Rules Requiring Access to Advanced Communications Services (ACS) and Equipment by People with Disabilities.”

Yes, they are asking the FCC to waive their legal obligations to provide ACS access for disabled users of e-readers.

But wait: Is this really a straight attempt to get out of obligations to the disabled? The Coalition’s case doesn’t revolve around existing accessibility options on e-reading devices. Rather, it is specifically about the requirements imposed on devices that are categorized as providing Advanced Communications Services: fast wireless network access, video, audio, etc.

“E-readers simply are not designed, built, or marketed for ACS, and the public understands the distinction between e-readers and general-purpose tablets,” declares the Coalition petition. “Granting the petition is in the public interest because rendering ACS accessible on e-readers would require fundamentally altering the devices to be more like general-purpose tablets in cost, form factor, weight, user interface, and reduced battery life, and yet the necessary changes, if they were made, would not yield a meaningful benefit to individuals with disabilities.”

“On October 8, 2010, the President signed into law the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010,” the FCC explains. “The law’s provisions are designed to ensure that individuals with disabilities have access to emerging Internet Protocol-based communication and video programming technologies in the 21st Century.”

As the FCC page shows, the Coalition is not the first organization to petition for a waiver on the Act, and other waivers already appear to have been granted. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and the Entertainment Software Association all have been granted waivers until October 2015, with affected devices and programs including “Internet protocol-enabled television sets, Internet-enabled digital video players, cable set-top boxes, and gaming consoles, services and software.” To that extent, the Coalition is only playing catch-up.

The petition insists that “e-readers are a distinct class of equipment,” and explains at length that they are used only for reading, with many examples from actual devices, marketing materials, and product literature, and are not marketed to offer ACS services. And in principle, I’d agree that e-readers, in the sense of cheap E Ink devices with readily resizeable text readable under natural light, actually offer considerable benefits to visually challenged users. And yes, those benefits might be eroded if manufacturers were forced to raise prices to comply with accessibility obligations that were intended to apply to a whole different class of devices. (You don’t mandate air bags for bicycles.)

Yet you can see the counter-arguments. Amazon and Kobo at least offer their e-readers in ranges that scale without differentiation from E Ink devices to full AV and Internet-capable color tablets—the Kindle Fire and the Kobo Arc. There’s no cutoff in their branding. And price points for smaller Android tablets are chasing down to e-reader levels already. Would it really hurt the makers so much from a pricing POV to impose those extra requirements? Furthermore, manufacturers have sold screen refresh rates and bundled browsers, not to mention color screens in some cases, as big plus points for customers. And any user of a Kobo Arc or Kindle Fire ought to have every legal entitlement to the same ACS accessibility features as on the fully-featured tablets they resemble in all but name.

All in all, I will be very interested to see what the FCC makes of this one. And I think the Coalition could have done itself a favor by being a little more pro-active and public about stating its case before introducing its petition.

When Smashwords was first created, it was a place writers could sell their e-books. But the site quickly changed from retailer to distributor, getting books onto Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Sony and Apple iBooks among a number of other outlets.

TeleRead had a chance to interview Smashwords CEO Mark Coker about the company’s distribution network, and the changing publishing landscape.

TeleRead: When did it seem that Smashwords was becoming more of a distributor than a retailer? Or was that the plan from the beginning of the company?

Mark Coker: When we launched Smashwords in early 2008, our platform made it easy to publish and sell an ebook in our own store. We never planned to become a distributor. In early 2009, however, I had an epiphany. Our small store was an island. Readers were going to bookstores to find their next read, so we needed to get our books into the major online ebook stores. I studied the landscape and was impressed by the example of Ingram, which was the leading distributor of print books to retailers. By efficiently managing the distribution and fulfillment logistics for print books, they were offering an incredibly valuable service to publishers, retailers and readers alike. So I got the crazy idea to make Smashwords the Ingram of self-published ebooks. It was clear at the time that self-published ebook authors were unable to reach the major retailers. Only Amazon had a viable platform for indies. By the end of 2009, we signed our first distribution deals with Barnes & Noble, Sony and Kobo. In early 2010, we became one of Apple’s first authorized aggregators.

Today, over 90% of our sales come from our distribution network, and it’s where we’ve placed 95% of our development effort over the last four years.

TR: In the end of the year blog post for 2012, you wrote that 80 percent of the authors use Smashwords as a distributor. When did you start to see the number skew in this direction? What is the number now?

Mark Coker

MC: Nearly 100% of our authors use us to distribute to one or more retailers in our network. We give our authors the ability to opt out of any retailer channel, and some do. Even though all our authors have the ability to upload direct to most of the retailers we serve, the vast majority choose to reach the retailers via Smashwords. I think the primary reason is that we make it fast and convenient for an author to centrally manage their books and metadata across multiple retailers. They can upload a single book file, formatted to our Style Guide instructions, and it’ll satisfy all the retailers. They can update the price or cover once at Smashwords, and that change propagates out to the retailers. We provide consolidated payments, sales reporting and end-of-year tax reporting, which are huge time savers. We provide preorders and merchandising support.

Bottom line, I think the authors who use Smashwords recognize that we make global ebook distribution fast and easy, and we help them spend more time writing and less time fussing with multiple platforms.

TR: With Smashwords as a distributor of e-books, how do you think that has changed the publishing industry?

MC: We were the first to open up Barnes & Noble and Sony to indie ebooks. On day one of Apple’s iBookstore launch, 2,200 of those books were from Smashwords. I think our greatest contribution to date is that we created simple publishing and distribution tools, and offered these tools for free to writers around the world. Core to our philosophy is that we sincerely believe that every aspiring author deserves a chance to publish, and readers deserve the freedom to decide what they want to read.

I knew that if we could create simple publishing tools, we could help unlock the brilliance locked between the minds and fingertips of writers around the world. I think most people in the publishing industry thought we were insane to believe in indie authors as we did. One well-known publishing industry veteran told me I was delusional when I told him he was underestimating the impact indies would have on the publishing industry. Look around. Today, indie authors are climbing all the most respected bestseller charts. Indies are taking reader eyeballs away from New York by wowing readers with high-quality, low-cost ebooks. The revolution has only just begun, and publishers have yet to experience the full impact to come.

TR: How much further do you expect the distribution network to grow?

MC: In the next six months you’ll see us expand our distribution with new retailers, new library aggregators, and new and innovative models of distribution. Our job is to put our books closer to readers, wherever they may be.

TR: What were some of the bumps you’ve dealt with along the way from retailers when you approached them about distributing e-books to their stores?

MC: Our first discussion in 2009 was with Barnes & Noble. Prior to the discussion, I mistakenly assumed that they and others would feel reticent to take our books. From the first discussion, Barnes & Noble wanted all our books. Sony and Kobo wanted all our books. All the major ebook retailers deserve massive kudos for their support of indie authors from day one. These retailers recognize that their customers appreciate choice. By moving bookselling onto virtual online shelves, it became cost-effective for the retailers to stock the widest variety of books, even books that might not sell.

TR: With the retailers creating their own self-publishing platforms, what does Smashwords have to do to stay competitive?

MC: We’re in an odd situation where our biggest partners are also our biggest competitors. It would be an understatement for me to say I was disappointed to see B&N and Kobo launch direct publishing platforms after we started working with them. Our business is—and always has been—oriented toward helping our retailers become as successful as possible, because their success creates success for our authors. Suddenly they created new groups within their companies designed to take our authors. I think the millions of dollars they invested to create these platforms, and the millions necessary to operate them, would have been much better invested focusing on the retail experience of the customers, and the development of their e-reading devices. That’s how they compete against Amazon. When you consider the cost to build and operate a platform, it’s cheaper for a retailer to source titles from Smashwords than to reinvent the wheel with their own platform.

Even despite this competition, we remain committed to helping our retailer partners build profitable businesses with our books. I think the fact that most of our authors continue to distribute with us, even though they have the option to go direct, speaks the value-add from the author’s perspective of working with a distributor. Going forward, our challenge is to continue pushing the envelope so that authors who work with us have an advantage over those who don’t. I think if we continue improving the speed and reliability of our distributions and the speed of sales reporting, and we continue to give our authors more control over their books and metadata, and we continue to innovate with new capabilities such as our new preorder feature, I think authors will continue to partner with Smashwords. Even though we’ve been doing this now for five years, I still feel like we’ve only scratched the surface of what we can do for our authors.

T: How does Smashwords plan to open up more distribution outlets globally?

MC: Our books are in great demand because we give a retailer the ability the quickly and efficiently ingest over 200,000 titles, including titles from most of the world’s best-selling indie authors. It’s not difficult for us to sign new retail partners. The challenge for us is to be selective, and invest our efforts wisely. We want to choose reliable partners who will help our authors reach new readers.

At the same time, we want to continue reinvesting in our existing partners. Even though our staff has grown considerably, we have limited hours in every day, so we’re always asking ourselves what can we do today that will provide the greatest number of our authors the greatest aggregate benefit. Often, the answer is to invest more time in our existing partners. We’ve done some amazing things with Apple over the last year, for example. Nevertheless, stay tuned. We have new distribution partners to announce in the months ahead!

T: How does adding pre-orders to the distribution network help authors?

MC: Preorders offer authors an incredibly powerful new merchandising and discovery tool. Preorders allow authors to accumulate orders in advance of the official “onsale” date, and when the onsale date hits those orders credit all at once. This can cause a title to spike in the bestseller lists, since most bestseller lists heavily weight unit sales over the preceding 24 hours. By spiking in the bestseller lists, the books become more visible to more readers, which then sets off a virtuous self-reinforcing cycle of more discovery and more sales, which then kicks off the retailer’s “also bought” algorithms. Bottom line, preorders are a catalyst for improved discovery and sales. I expect preorders will eventually be seen as a best practice for book launches. Authors will build preorder runway into their release schedules. We’re doing preorders to Apple, Barnes & Noble and Kobo.

T: What do you see in the future for Smashwords?

MC: We’ve grown significantly over the last few years, but I think our best days are still ahead of us. Today we’re the world’s largest distributor of self-published ebooks. Over the next few years, you’ll see us continue to innovate and improve upon every aspect of our business. We want to make it faster, easier and more effective for writers to reach readers via Smashwords distribution than any other means. If we help our authors achieve greater success with us than without us, then we’ll be continue to be successful.

Sony seems to be focusing its efforts on e-books, and trying to get readers out there on board by getting them money.

Sony announced its first affiliate program through Commission Junction, according to The Digital Reader. It will pay six percent on every e-book sold through its affiliate links on websites and blogs. This seems to focus directly on author websites and book blogging sites.

It’s interesting to see Sony move in this direction. Authors promote their books on their websites and social media. Often, they send links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo – where they could also make affiliate money.

Amazon offers about the same percentage (depends on sales and amount of links from free books) while B&N also offers six percent and Kobo offers five percent.

Sony is clearly trying to become a more relevant player in the market. With B&N struggling, did Sony see a way to push its muscle around in the industry?

It doesn’t seem as though this is going to make a lot of money for affiliate users unless it’s a high-traffic website. But even then, six percent of a $12.99 book is only .78 cents.